The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth

By Lillian Stewart Carl

In The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth, Lillian Stewart Carl conducts a tour through the mystery, the magic, and the myth of history.

Thirteen short stories take place at the end of the British colonization of America and the beginning of the British colonization of India, in medieval England and revolutionary Scotland, in Shakespeare’s timeless Illyria and the very real twenty-first century.

From St. Thomas Becket to Thomas Jefferson, from Charles Dickens to Bonnie Prince Charlie, from Elizabeth I at her height to Ann Boleyn, her mother, at her depth, from slaves to soldiers to sorcerers to sinners—and even to a striped cat or two—the characters are often detectives and are always good company.

Greed, love and hate, and the rights of man—and woman—provide motives for murder and more. The odd touch of fantasy illuminates several lives. And along that shore between the present and the past, nothing is certain.

The Muse and Other Stories includes twelve short stories especially commissioned for print theme anthologies (three of which were reprinted in “Best Of” anthologies) and a story published in a magazine, plus new Author’s Notes and an essay on writing short historical mystery.

"Inspired contributions include...Lillian Stewart Carl's "The Necromancer's Apprentice," which presents an interesting solution to the actual mystery surrounding the death of Amy Robsart, wife of Elizabeth I's favorite lord, balancing wizardry with astute deductions about the political motives of those who stood to benefit." Publishers Weekly on Murder by Magic

"Topnotch entries include...Lillian Stewart Carl's "Way Down in Egypt's Land," a marvelous tale about 19th-century slavery..." Publishers Weekly on Thou Shalt Not Kill

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lillian Stewart Carl
• Release date: Mar 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476304663

Book preview

What reviewers are saying about the stories in The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth

One of the most memorable pieces was ‘A Stake of Holly’, Lillian Stewart Carl’s tale of an adult Tiny Tim playing sleuth to track down the identities of Scrooge’s three Christmas ghosts.—Book Loons

A Rose with All Its Thorns by Lillian Stewart Carl puts the personality of Anne Boleyn in a (female) Tudor historian at an academic conference which reminds one of Connie Willis’s academic settings and characters—and performs admirably in that genre."—Evelyn C. Leeper for NESFA

‘"A Dish of Poison’ is the prequel to Twelfth Night, giving the disguised Viola the opportunity to solve the mystery of Olivia’s brother’s death. It’s an enjoyable mystery that works without compromising any of the original story."—B. Redman, Book Help Web

Topnotch entries include . . . Lillian Stewart Carl’s ‘Way Down in Egypt’s Land,’ a marvelous tale about 19th-century slavery . . .—Publishers Weekly

Lillian Stewart Carl’s ‘Sardines for Tea,’ about two ‘veddy British’ kitties that solve a jewel theft, never lets the unlikely premise interfere with the fun. Sure to be popular with the kitty crowd.—Booklist

Inspired contributions include...Lillian Stewart Carl’s ‘The Necromancer’s Apprentice,’ which presents an interesting solution to the actual mystery surrounding the death of Amy Robsart, wife of Elizabeth I’s favorite lord, balancing wizardry with astute deductions about the political motives of those who stood to benefit.—Publishers Weekly

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Copyright 2012 Lillian Stewart Carl

The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth

by

Lillian Stewart Carl

Table of Contents

A Stake of Holly

A Mimicry of Mockingbirds

Cold as Fire

A Rose with All Its Thorns

A Dish of Poison

The Diamonds of Golkonda

The Eye of the Beholder

Way Down in Egypt’s Land

Over the Sea from Skye

The Rag and Bone Man

Sardines for Tea

The Necromancer’s Apprentice

The Muse

Writing Historical Mystery Short Stories

Author Biography

A Stake of Holly

Jacob Marley had been dead as a doornail, to begin with, and soon Ebeneezer Scrooge would no longer be debating just why a doornail, rather than a coffin nail, was considered a fatal bit of ironmongery.

Tim Cratchit bent over his benefactor’s bed—it was his deathbed, but Tim was not yet ready to admit to that awful fact—Tim bent over Scrooge’s wasted features and said, You sent for me, sir?

Scrooge’s eyes fluttered open, and took a long moment to focus, as though they were already inspecting the new world to which they were bound. Then they lit with a pleasure that plumped the deep furrows in his face and tinged its ashen color with pink. Tim, my lad. Always a good lad, aren’t you?

Thanks to you, sir. The young man pulled a chair, lately abandoned by the nurse, closer to the bed and sat down. Your generosity to my family these nineteen years . . .

Laboriously Scrooge waved his hand in the air and let it fall back to the counterpane. It made a thump no louder than that of thistledown. What right have I to demand thanks for going about my business as a steward of mankind and fulfilling my responsibility to my neighbor?

Still, Tim insisted, I owe you not only my health and my education, but my position with Lord Ector.

No, no, no, pass your gratitude on to someone else. Teach your children. . . . But I assume you will be blessed with offspring, even though you as yet have no prospects?

Tim ducked his handsome features shyly. I shall find a wife, never you fear, Mr. Scrooge. I don’t spend all my time cataloguing Ector’s collections.

No, you spend your spare hours scribbling stories.

"Only the occasional tale for The London Illustrated News and the like."

And fine tales they are, Tim. Take care, though, not to neglect the finer sentiments. The old man wheezed a moment, then coughed. I was once engaged to be married, Tim.

Tim, having heard this story many times before, nodded patiently.

Belle Fezziwig, she was, daughter of my old employer. I let her slip through my fingers, for I preferred the touch of gold to that of a human hand.

Such was the curse of Midas, murmured Tim.

The apron-swathed nurse clattered about the room, building up the fire and making mysterious motions with vials, spoons, and porringers. Don’t be tiring him out now, young sir. He needs his rest, he does.

Bah, muttered Scrooge. Before long I’ll have rest aplenty. We all come to the grave in the end, as the Ghost, the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, reminded me. I can only hope that my efforts these last years have shortened the heavy chain I once dragged behind me and ensured that my death will be remarked upon with grief, not indifference, and never pleasure.

Tim had heard that story as well. Indeed, he remembered his own part in it as vividly as any occurrence of his childhood. Scrooge claimed to have been visited one icy Christmas Eve first by the ghost of his old parner, Marley, and then by three mysterious spirits, who had thawed his cold heart and softened his flinty disposition. Tim would have thought the story merely a fancy on the old man’s part, save that Scrooge was the least fanciful man in the city of London. Save that Scrooge had manifestly changed his ways that Christmas, to the benefit of all.

You sent for me, sir? Tim repeated, sensing that his patron had matters burdening his sensibilities far and beyond the usual courtesies and reminiscences.

Yes, so I did. Tim, I’d like for you to do something for me.

With pleasure, sir.

The three spirits, the Ghost of Christmas Past with its white dress and the jet of light springing from its head, the Ghost of Christmas Present, a jolly giant, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, shrouded in a black hood. Were they dreams, thrown up not from a feverish but from a frozen mind? Or were they truly visions from another dimension of this familiar world?

Scrooge’s talon-like hand seized upon Tim’s, with its ink-stained forefinger. The ghost of my old partner Marley told me this: that if a man’s spirit does not walk abroad among his fellow men in life, then it must do so after death. And, conversely, that a spirit working kindly in this little sphere of earth will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness.

There are the spirits paying penance, said Tim, elucidating the old man’s words, and those whose generosity of temper persists beyond the grave.

Marley was one of the former. He told me this himself. But what of the other three ghosts? What events in their mortal lives sent them to me? Soon I too, shall be a spirit among spirits. I would like to seek out those who came to me, and thank them most humbly for their efforts. I must know, Tim, who they were in life.

Tim had barely begun to digest this strange request when he felt a presence at his back, the bulk of the nurse looming over him like a great warship under full sail bearing down upon a dinghy. Begging your pardon, sir . . .

Yes, Mrs. Gump?

If you’re wanting to contact the spiritual world, there’s none better at it than Mrs. Minnow in Bedford Square.

A medium? Tim asked. I know that even Her Majesty has employed spiritualists, endeavoring to speak with her late consort, Prince Albert, but still. . . .

Scrooge’s hand tightened upon his, grasping the young man’s warm flesh as it had once grasped at gold coins, but to much greater effect. Tim, I know not if this Mrs. Minnow could be of help to you, and through you to me, but if you please . . .

Yes, said Tim, setting aside his qualms as unworthy of both mentor and student. Yes, of course. I shall do everything in my power to answer your questions, Mr. Scrooge.

Bless you, my boy. Releasing Tim’s hand, the old man settled back onto his pillow. The blush drained from his cheeks, leaving them the color of cold gruel. Still he smiled gently, even affectionately, up at his bedcurtains.

Tim took his leave, and walked out into a swirl of snowflakes with less spring in his step than steely determination in his soul.

* * * * *

Mrs. Minnow’s parlor was all respectability. Not one hint of either charnel house or circus detracted from the sprigged wallpaper, the ponderous rosewood furniture, the circular table draped with a paisley-pattern shawl. The lady herself resembled a doll clothed in taffeta. When she told Tim to join those seated at the table, he did, even though he would have had more confidence in the spiritualist if either her apartments or her person had offered evidence of things, if not unseen, at least unsuspected.

With a sly silken rustle, Mrs. Minnow turned the flame in the oil lamp down to the smallest of flickers. Let us all join hands, she instructed, putting her words into effect by taking Tim’s right hand in her own soft grasp. He felt as though he were holding a mite of warm bread dough.

He allowed the bewhiskered gentleman on his left to clasp his other hand, and strained his eyes through the wintry gloom, but could see only shadows and implications, grey writ upon grey.

Another crinkle of fabric, and Mrs. Minnow began to murmur softly in what might or might not have been the Queen’s English. She could as well have been summoning a waiter as summoning spirits, Tim thought. . . .

A sudden swish in the air above the table, and a spatter of ice-cold water droplets, sent a ripple of surprise around its periphery. Like the gentleman on his left, Tim jerked in surprise. Mrs. Minnow did not.

The odor of pine boughs freshly cut in a snowy field came to Tim’s nose. A masculine voice reached his ears, although it seemed to issue from the female shape to his right. There is someone here who remembers a Christmas Eve long ago.

After a long pause, Tim found his voice. Ah—yes.

I see a lad, said the voice, a small boy with a crutch, sitting before a fireplace.

Now how did Mrs. Minnow know of this? For a moment Tim entertained the thought that Scrooge and his nurse and Mrs. Minnow herself were conspiring in an elaborate joke at his own expense. But if so, why?

In for a penny, in for a pound, he told himself, and directed the—the spirit guide—to speak of Scrooge’s past, not his own. I was that boy. That I survived, nay prospered, and have achieved hale manhood I owe to a benefactor. It is on his behalf that I come here today. He is searching for the identity of three, er, friends who once did him the greatest of good turns.

Another silence. Then the voice, tentative now, as though pondering, said, Fezziwig. Arthur Fezziwig.

I beg your pardon?

Of Fezziwig’s Chandlery, supplier of goods to His Majesty’s Navy during the French wars.

Tim knew quite well the name of Scrooge’s former employer, Belle’s father. Again and again had the old man spoken of the Christmas parties held in Fezziwig’s warehouse, of how much joy he and his fellow apprentice Dick Wilkins had found there, of how Belle had refused to dance with anyone but young Ebenezer Scrooge—difficult as it was to conceive of a man so withered by age ever being flush with youth. What Tim did not know was whether Mrs. Minnow or her spirit guide meant to name Scrooge’s employer as one of his ghosts.

If Arthur Fezziwig is one of my benefactor’s friends, Tim asked, then who are the other two?

Fezziwig’s Chandlery, said the voice. Christmas Eve. A pudding soaked in brandy and set ablaze. A sprig of holly. The gleam of gold.

Tim leaned forward and the spongy hand in his drew him back. Mrs. Minnow’s own feminine voice said, You have had your answer, sir.

But. . . . Tim began, and then stopped, sensible of the other ears ranged about the table.

A wobbly note of music sounded near the ceiling of the room, not the last trumpet, certainly, but one that was near to expiring. Again the male voice spoke from Mrs. Minnow’s lips. There is someone here who has recently lost a beloved brother.

The gentleman with the luxuriant whiskers stirred and spoke. Yes, yes. Dreadful accident it was, the poor soul burned to a cinder in his rooms.

Spiritous liquors, intoned the ghostly voice. Fumes and fire.

Resisting the urge to inquire just which liquors were consumed by spirits, Tim retired into his own thoughts. If Scrooge’s partner Marley could return from the grave to assist him, then why not Arthur Fezziwig? That, at least, Tim could credit. But a pudding garnished with holly, and the gleam of gold—if those were clues, they were maddeningly slender ones.

Fezziwig’s Chandlery, though. There was a place, a time, and a person. While Tim very much doubted he had any answers as yet, he now had more specific questions.

* * * * *

The gleam of sunlight on the new-fallen snow made even the dirty, dingy streets of London shine as brightly as the streets of heaven. Each windowpane seemed to Tim to be gilded like the illuminated manuscripts in Lord Ector’s library. Soon it would be Christmas yet again.

Passing beneath the weathered old signboard reading Scrooge and Cratchit, he opened the door to the counting-house offices. There was his father, sitting at his desk, a ledger book open before him. Tim remembered how thin and careworn the man had once been, for many years supporting his family on fifteen bob a week, until at last Scrooge had his change of heart, raised his salary, and in time made him a full partner in the firm.

Now it was his hair that was thin, above a face lined with age, not care. Still, Tim could not remember a time when Bob Cratchit had not displayed a cheerful and confident disposition.

It does my heart good to see you, Tim, said the old man, greeting his son with a clap on his shoulder. Why, but for Mr. Scrooge I might not have you to see, and for that I am grateful not only at Christmas Eve, but on every day of the year. How fares our benefactor?

Not well. I fear his days have grown short.

Bob’s face contracted to a pinpoint of sorrow and resignation mingled. I wish there were some service we could render him, here at the end.

There is, said Tim, and acquainted his father with Scrooge’s request, and with the step he had already taken to fulfill it.

Bob tossed Tim’s tale from thought to thought, then said gravely, I remember when Scrooge saw Christmas merely as the one day of the year he could turn no profit. It was that same fateful Christmas Eve that I heard him say, ‘If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.’

He tempted fate, then, said Tim, and summoned the spirits with his own words.

And yet, just what spirits were they? A fine question, an apt question. Surely, to have had such a profound impact on Scrooge’s disposition, these ghosts were indeed friends and acquaintances, as you suggest.

No, as Mrs. Minnow and her spirit guide suggest. Tim looked about the offices, shabby still. His gaze settled upon the ledgers mounting higher and higher up a tall shelf, until the topmost row of books made a veritable Himalayan peak of dust and cobwebs. "What happened to Arthur Fezziwig, Father? His business failed, didn’t it?

Yes. With the defeat of Napoleon and the ending of the French wars the demand for his goods dropped away, and new means of production superseded the old ones to which he clung, as we all cling to that which is familiar. Fezziwig died impoverished in wealth but not in spirit, or so I heard.

Aha, said Tim.

Scrooge, I believe, considered his employer’s fate to be a cautionary tale, and so made his fortune not by selling goods susceptible to spoilage and changes in taste, but by dealing in properties and making loans. Always he felt the shadow of insolvency looming over him, even though he had funds enough to buy and sell a business like Fezziwig’s Chandlery ten times over.

Could it be, then, that Scrooge’s engagement to Belle Fezziwig was broken off because her father had been unable to bequeath her a dowry?

I believe so, although I doubt if even Scrooge at his most avaricious would have stated that so bluntly.

Did Belle ever marry?

Oh yes. After his miraculous transformation—and if ghosts or spirits were instrumental in that transformation, then it must truly have been miraculous . . .

Tim smiled his agreement.

. . . Scrooge asked me to seek her out, to discover if she needed his assistance. But it was too late. Bob sat down in his chair, frowning slightly and drumming his fingertips upon his ledger. What was her husband’s name? Oh yes, James Redlaw. He called in here one night, a full seven years before Scrooge’s metamorphosis, seeking to borrow against his property and thereby pay his debts. But that was the night Jacob Marley lay at the point of death. Redlaw revealed a greater delicacy of feeling than Scrooge himself by going away without transacting his business.

So Belle’s husband also found himself a broken man?

Not only in finance, but in health—he died the next year, I’m told. In losing her father and then her husband, Mrs. Redlaw was obliged to support herself and her daughter on very little income. I can only suppose, then, that she despaired of this world and all too soon was taken up into the next. Bob shook his head sadly.

When you went searching for her, you discovered that she was dead.

Yes, and under most unfortunate and mysterious circumstances, although I don’t know the full story. When I acquainted Scrooge with this fact, he said something about having seen her in his vision, well and happy with her family, and so he hoped that she was, indeed, in that bourne from which no traveller ever returns.

Well then, said Tim, properly saddened by the circumstances, and yet, at the same time, wondering if his clue had disintegrated in his hands like the ashes of a Yule log on Boxing Day. What of Belle’s daughter?

I believe she went into service, as a governess in the house of Sir Charles Pumphrey, the financier.

Another man of business, Tim thought. The gleam of gold did indeed illuminate his quest, although what the blazing pudding illuminated, he had not the least idea.

Still, perhaps he had made some progress. If Arthur Fezziwig had been one of Scrooge’s spirits, then perhaps his unfortunate daughter Belle had also been. I shall pay a visit to the Pumphrey household, Tim told his father.

Very good. And may I suggest you also call on your brother Peter? The lawyer with whom he has partnered himself has worked for many years with properties, deeds, and wills—although I hope to heaven they are not chaining themselves behind him, as they did to poor Mr. Marley. There you may well learn more about the Fezziwigs and the Redlaws than I can tell you.

Then so I shall. With a firm grasp of his father’s hand—strange, how that hand was growing so increasingly frail—Tim settled his hat upon his head and his feet upon the icy pavement.

* * * * *

At the sound of feminine footsteps, Tim turned away from the black marble chimneypiece and its clock enclosed by a glass dome, as though time, like a jewel displayed in a shopkeeper’s window, were a valuable commodity alloted only to those who could afford it instead of meted out to all humanity, to use or abuse at will.

Do I have the honor of addressing Miss Redlaw? Tim asked the elegant woman who entered the parlor, the white square of his card seeming tarnished against the alabaster of her hand.

I was once Miss Redlaw, she answered. Now I am Mrs. Pumphrey. You are fortunate, Mr. Cratchit, that the servant who answered your knock has been in our employ long enough to know my former identity.

So the governess was now mistress of the house, Tim told himself. Had she married the Pumphrey’s only son, and so restored herself to the position in life to which she had been born? Such an event seemed likely—her face and form, even in mature years, held just such a blushing beauty as he had always envisioned in Belle Fezziwig’s. But that was one question he saw little chance of asking.

He sank onto the chair that Mrs. Pumphrey indicated. When she had spread her voluminous skirts across a horsehair sofa—which movement released a scent of spring lilac into the air—he identified himself, detailed his family’s relationship to Ebenezer Scrooge, sketched out Scrooge’s story of the three ghosts, and recited the results of his researches so far.

Save for a slight creasing of her brow, Mrs. Pumphrey’s delicate features did not move for several ticks of the mantelpiece clock. Perhaps, Tim thought, she would condemn him for his effrontery in asking questions about her family. Perhaps she would order the servant who had seen him here to show him hence.

At last her pink lips parted. I commend you for visiting Mrs. Minnow. She has afforded me invaluable assistance by contacting the spirit of my grandfather Fezziwig, who is as hearty on the astral plane as he was here on Earth.

Tim made sure Mrs. Pumphrey did not notice the quick relaxation of his posture, and the sigh of relief that escaped his throat.

As for my mother and father—well, as you perhaps already know, there is a tragic story. How it cheers me to know that they, too, are well and happy in the great beyond!

And perhaps Mr. Fezziwig and Mrs. Redlaw, Tim hinted in Scrooge’s words, after working kindly in this little sphere of earth, find their mortal life too short for their vast means of usefulness.

Yes, she said, coloring prettily, I do believe so. You see, Mr. Cratchit, my mother regretted breaking her engagement to Mr. Scrooge, because, she said, if she had been his wife she could perhaps have modified his miserly ways. And yet if she had been Mrs. Scrooge, she would never have been Mrs. Redlaw.

It is a paradox, said Tim.

But that was my mother, always thinking of others even when her—when our—position became dire. After my father passed over, Mother and I were reduced to the income from one rental property, a public house, and the interest from several India bonds. Still, though, there were others less fortunate then we, and Mother made sure that what we little we had, we shared.

Tim, having told himself that the ladies’ income had no doubt been greater than fifteen bob a week, now congratulated himself for not stating this aloud.

We took lodgings in a house owned by Dick Wilkins. Is that name familiar to you?

Why yes, Tim said, sitting up straighter. Was he not one of Mr. Fezziwig’s apprentices and a boyhood friend of Mr. Scrooge’s?

The lady nodded, setting her curls to dancing. That he was. Grandfather Fezziwig helped Mr. Wilkins establish a weaving mill, dyeworks, and clothing manufactory, which first supplied uniforms to our troops fighting the Corsican, Bonaparte, and then went on to provide ready-made clothes to all classes of folk. While Grandfather’s business failed, Mr. Wilkins’s prospered. As an old family friend, my mother was quite pleased when he offered her lodgings in his house.

He rented out rooms?

Yes, Mrs. Pumphrey said, a slight edge entering her voice. By this time he owned many properties, and lived with his wife Theodora—a foreign person she was, with the exotic beauty of a gypsy—in a house that had once been a lovely villa, but which he had subdivided into many small flats, the better to turn a profit, I believe.

The gleam of gold, Tim repeated to himself, but said nothing.

The edge in Mrs. Pumphrey’s voice was taking on the sharpness of that serpent’s tooth mentioned in Scripture as belonging to a thankless child. And yet neither she nor her mother, Tim thought, was the person of whom she was thinking. Mr. Wilkins persuaded my mother to sell him her properties and bonds, in return for which he guaranteed her an annuity for life. The bargain was fair, she felt. What she did not realize—what none of us mercifully, realize—is how soon one’s life can end.

What happened? asked Tim, dreading her answer.

My mother was found burned to a cinder, in her bed one Christmas morning.

Tim searched for some appropriate response, and found only a simple, I am so very sorry.

Mrs. Pumphrey looked down into her lap, where her fair hands—white as the garment of the first ghost—were tearing Tim’s card into shreds. Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins put it about that my mother, in her despair, had turned to drink, for such spontaneous burnings do happen to those besotted with alcohol.

With spiritous liquors, thought Tim, realizing suddenly that Mrs. Minnow had been speaking not only to the gentleman with the whiskers but to himself. He should, no doubt, have kept an open mind and paid closer attention.

My dear mother, though, while having her moments of despair, was still inclined to the positive outlook of the Fezziwig disposition, and took only the occasional glass of sherry. The lady lay the shreds of the card upon a marble-topped table and folded her hands. Yes, Mother suffered from a cold that Christmas Eve. Mrs. Wilkins provided a counterpane from her own storage chest for Mother’s bed, and smelling salts to clear the congestion in her throat that had rendered her speechless. But Mother took no drink, not one drop beyond the brandy soaking her portion of plum pudding.

Was there an inquiry made?

The police made a brief inquiry, but brushed the matter aside, wishing to spare my feelings, they said, and those of the Wilkins family.

But you suspect the Wilkins of taking some action to bring about your mother’s death?

Indeed, while manifestly Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins profited by my mother’s death, there are no means by which they could have accomplished it. I myself saw my mother alive, if not well, when I carried her pudding into her room on Christmas Eve, and I myself was breakfasting with the Wilkins’ on Christmas morning when the maidservant came rushing in with her terrible intelligence.

Tim eyed the lady’s bowed head with its trembling curls. So Belle had indeed died in unfortunate and mysterious circumstances, as his father had heard. Now he understood, with ghastly certainty, why it was that Scrooge’s first ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Past, had appeared illuminated by a flame.

Collecting herself with a little shudder, Mrs. Pumphrey turned a wan smile upon her guest. You may well ask, Mr. Cratchit, whether I have ever inquired of my mother, through Mrs. Minnow’s spirit guide, exactly how she came to die.

Yes, Tim might well have asked that, had he not been reluctant to disturb the